Open mac hard drive on windows pc

Question

I recently accidently killed my 2007 Macbook by water damage, and I'm not sure what format the disc is formated in.

I see the drive in disc utility, but all the options when right clicking are grayed out, see screenshot (its in Swedish, but it illustrates my problem). Im really keen to rescue my photos and documents...

The macbook had mac os X Snow leopard, my pc has windows 7 and the disc is a 640 GB WD.

Solution

OS X uses HFS+, so you will need a program that will read HFS drives. The best free tool I can find is HFSExplorer. It's commonly used for:

• A user of an Intel Mac running Windows with Boot Camp in need of accessing the files on the Mac OS X hard drive.

• Owners of HFS+-formatted iPods, that wish to access their content from within Windows or elsewhere (a user emailed me and verified that this works).

• Users of PearPC or similar Mac emulation/virtualization software that wish to access the contents of their virtual hard disks (will only work if the disk image is stored in raw format, as in PearPC).

• People that need to access the contents of HFS+-formatted .dmg files.

It should let you rescue your files now.

There is also HFS for Windows and MacDrive, but they cost money. They both have free trials, which might let you rescue files.

Comments

[Thalys]

you might want to consider linux livecds since many have HFS compatibility, including ubuntu. The disk looks exactly like i'd assume a FS windows dosen't recognise should look like tho

[Theodor]

I tried both programs, HTS Explorer does not find the disc, and MacDrive lets med browse through the disc, but when entering a folder containing files the system claims the folder is damaged...

[Simon Sheehan]

@Theodor Perhaps your disk suffered water damage as well?

[Theodor]

Well, the disc is fairly weather resistant, I mean its completly sealed. Dunno, will continue trying.

[Theodor]

Actually some files are openable, like files i downloaded ie totaly worthless... I might have to get the disc to a recovery company?

[Simon Sheehan]

@Theodor Not sure, you'd have to see what the damage really is - its hard to tell without being there